Ubuntu destroyed my Network Card - RTL8111

[ttguy]

As mentioned above I had this issue. And so I attempted to fix it following the suggestions from sandrogalli.

I thought I should update this thread about my experience.

I made the changes while running the 2.6.31-22-generic Ubuntu 9.10 - the Karmic Koala. I was on this version - because I restored this version from an image after my network died on my Lucid install. The restore did not fix networking - see my previous post - and so I tried following sadrogallis instructions under Karmic.

11/6/2010
Get info about the installed network card

 lspci | grep Ethernet 
 
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)

get info about what driver is loaded - I have 8169 drivers for a 8168B card like sandrogalli.

Which he thinks is the problem and fixes as described below.

But others just fix it by unplugging the pc for 3 mins

 lsmod | grep r816* 
r8169                  32160  0  
mii                     5212  1 r8169

download the 8168 linux drivers and untar and install them

tar -xvf r8168-8.018.00.tar.bz2 
 
 sudo ./autorun.sh 
 
$ sudo rmmod r8169 
$ sudo modprobe r8168 
$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

At this point my networking is still down. So I UNPLUG the PC for one hour (posts say 3mins in enough)
This is supposed to make the Network card forget everything and have to reload the drivers.
When I restart I have networking back but lsmod | grep r816* still reports r8169

I then restore a disk image to give 2.6.32-22-generic Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - the Lucid Lynx
When this boots up after the restore networking is working.
$ lsmod | grep r816* reports the same ie I still 8169 drivers for a 8168B card - but it is working

r8169                  33980  0  
mii                     4381  1 r8169

12/6/2010 The 2.6.32-22-generic Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - the Lucid Lynx is still working - net work fine.
13/6/2010 - install a bunch of updates
kernal is still 2.6.32-22-generic
networking still working after these

So I don't really know what actually fixed it. I don't seem to have changed my drivers. It may have just been having the modem off for long enough.

[kismeras]

@ TTGUY - My experience was the same as yours and my networking didn't work. Here is a quicker way to get things up and running again without waiting hours.

This is how i do it with my laptop, not desktop.
1.Power of the PC
2. Take battery out
3. Open lid, press and hold power button for 15 seconds.
4. put the battery back in, plug in the power if you want and boot up. It should be working fine after that.

This does bring it back in Linux Mint too, but it just stops working again at some point. I decided to just run Windows on the laptop until there is a more permanent fix for this from Ubuntu. It's a brand new laptop and i don't want to risk permanent damage to the NIC.

[kismeras]

Quick question. Does anyone know if this is an issue with other Linux distros or just Ubuntu variants?

I haven't seen any other forums with people having this issue other than Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

[professordes]

This still appears to be an issue (for me at any rate ) with the latest x86 -24 kernel in Lucid. I put an old HDD with Vista and Jaunty that had been sitting around onto a new i3 motherboard and then updated/upgraded everything in situ.

The problems (apparently dead ethernet after rebooting into Ubuntu) started after I had upgraded the driver in Vista to the one offered by Realtek and rebooted into Lucid.

The suggested fixes - rolling back the driver and the WOL setting in Vista, powering off, restored connectivity.

The MB is a Gigabyte micro ATX GA-H55M-S2H and the ethernet chipset is definitely our RTL8111 friend....

[Sylchat]

Contributing to this post:

I have Asus P7P55D motherboard with Realtek "RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)", and Dual booting Windows 7 64 bits and Ubuntu 10.04 64 bits.

Network worked perfectly on both OSes when someday I realized that my transfer rate when copying a big file on Win7 from my SAN was really slow (1 MB/s). Back to Ubuntu, this was the same problem. As if my NIC was a 10Mb chip instead of a Gigabit chip... Same problem as Satosh:

My realtek nic rtl8111 (integrated on p7p55d-e) would only run in 10Mbps on either ubuntu lucid 64bit and win7. The cold boot (a couple of minutes off with no power plugged into the PC) worked. Thanks!

Anyway, I tried yingwuzhao's solution and now my LAN transfer copy is 36 MB/s (was 1MB/s) (Thanks!):

Simple power down you computer, and unplug every power sources, then wait for a couple of minutes, and start your computer again. The card will be alive again!

Also, I have read several posts on the internet, and I came up with the same conclusions that this realtek chip is crappy:

I would suggest the common factors are a 64-bit os/driver, dual-booting with Win7, and this realtek chipset (8168/8169/8139/8111) are to blame. It's also strange that the Asus P7P55 boards all seem to come up with this problem; but then they all share the same realtek chipset.

[finalmike]

Just for records sake, I just had this issue and unplugging for a few minutes and plugging back in fixed the issue. Thanks!!!

[Fada.mahdi]

Same problem here. I have Windows 7 Ultimate running. I partitioned Ubuntu, all my drivers work fine when running Ubuntu. But nothing works in Windows 7. its a direct result of Ubuntu. My sound, internet, and USB port drivers dont work at all in Windows now. I even removed Ubuntu yet still nothing works.

I have tried the power down method, no success. Now my computer is stuck. My only option is to try to wipe it out n reinstall my entire Windows 7 operating system again.

If anyone has any idea of a simpler way to fix this issue, please help me out.

Thanks!

[rre12]

For the people who have just unplugged their computer for a few minutes and replug it back in. Did this permanently fix your connection problem? It seems that this only temporarily fixes my problem. Occasionally when I boot back onto Windows, my NIC card does not seem to be awake. So I had to redo the trick. This is very frustrating. I still think that this is the result of the wrong driver. Does anyone know if the dev team know about this major issue?

[kwarde]

Just had the same problem and unplugging the power brought back the network card. Will see how it goes.
Gigabyte board

[shukle]

This looks like bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/573259 .
Yuo may want to pump the bug affects counters.